Researchers Qiang Chen and Tie Jun Cui of Southeast University in Nanjing, China created a device that partially simulates the effects (to a limited scale) of a black hole. It bends light differently from a the way that a black hole does, but it will readily absorb it:

The hole is the latest clever device to use 'metamaterials', specially engineered materials that can bend light in unusual ways. Previously, scientists have used such metamaterials to build 'invisibility carpets' and super-clear lenses.[...]

The new meta-black hole also bends light, but in a very different way. Rather than relying on gravity, the black hole uses a series of metallic 'resonators' arranged in 60 concentric circles. The resonators affect the electric and magnetic fields of a passing light wave, causing it to bend towards the centre of the hole. It spirals closer and closer to the black hole's 'core' until it reaches the 20 innermost layers. Those layers are made of another set of resonators that convert light into heat. The result: what goes in cannot come out. "The light into the core is totally absorbed," Cui says.

I'm astonished by all these negative comments. Even if it just resembles some of the aspects of a black hole, scientists are trying to determine how these phenomenon behave, and what exactly may be in the dark void of the absence of matter. This is a brilliant stepping stone to bigger things.